Follow My Lead
by Breathing in Poison
Summary: Mikannie Werefolf!AU: Annie always thought she was destined to be a lone wolf, just like her father. But one day, she goes into heat, exposing her as an omega, and is forced to flee her pack to wander the wilds alone-where she meets the strangely empty Alpha, Mikasa. Based on FearTheKeira's story, Chase The Moon, expect fighting, intense plot, and severe character conflict
1. Presenting

**Follow My Lead**

Inspired by FearTheKeira's fanfic, Chase The Moon. Check it out. Seriously. It's amazing.

WARNING!: This work is un beta-d. Constructive criticism is appreciated.

_Annie was running._

_Her breath was coming hard, rasping through her lungs, burning in the painfully cold air. Something ancient and powerful stirred through her blood, lending strength to her aching muscles, sending arrows of white-hot adrenaline through her veins. She knew not what drove her on, not really, but her instincts were screaming out to her, telling her that something was horribly, horribly wrong, and she had to run, had to get away..._

_She crested the hill, snow crunching beneath her feet..._

_...And saw the world on fire._

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Annie Leonhardt woke up.

She regained consciousness not with a start, but with a tensing of muscles and soft intake of breath. Slowly, achingly, painfully slowly, she opened her eyes, pinning the opposite wall in a sleepy glare. She had that uneasy out-of-body feeling that one only obtained after experiencing a particularly vivid dream; straining her mind for details yielded no results. With a soft sigh of weary acceptance, she rolled out of her nest of pelts, careful not wake her father, and padded silently over to the mouth of the den, stopping only to slip worn brown moccasins over her feet. While she normally went without, Annie's instincts were sharper than most-she could already sense that several inches of snow had fallen throughout the night. A tentative shake later, and Annie was up and out, hurtling over the dip into the tunnel and out into the pale morning light.

She landed with an _oof_ and the feeling of her legs sinking up to her knees in snow; apparently the betas in charge of sweeping out the tunnels had decided to neglect the Leonhardt burrow. She waved away her father's previous loner status with an indifferent shrug and a burst of irritation. Just because her father was a loner and her mother a runaway did _not_, for God's sake, mean that they deserved to be feared like this-

She caught her scowling reflection in a frozen puddle and stopped. Well. Maybe they did. She hadn't realized just how terrifying she could be when angry.

But couldn't they just see how badly she wanted to fit in?

Her stomach growled impatiently and Annie paused, breath misting white in the cold air. She frowned-that couldn't be right, she'd eaten a huge meal yesterday. Wolves were supposed to eat less during the winter months, not _more_; maybe she was going through a growth spurt. After all, one was way overdue-her father was over six feet tall, and no matter how many times he told her that her mother had been tiny, she wasn't convinced.

Another rumble of her stomach sent her tripping across to the campfire, lifting her legs high above the snow until she reached swept ground. Luckily for her, her pale skin and small stature allowed her to blend easily into the winter scenery, warranting her few questioning looks from the wolf part of the community.

Alas, this could not be said of the humans. But they were unimportant, hardly there in Annie's eyes, and she passed before them without sparing them a glance.

The ragged mountain man in charge of today's breakfast stirred as she approached; one look at her unusually lightweight clothing and the feral gleam in her eyes sent him scrambling for the pot of beef stew hanging over the fire. He scooped a generous amount into one of the hardy earthenware bowls near his feet and handed it to her, curling his fingers away when she reached out to accept it. Annie's quiet murmur of thanks only seemed to terrify him the more, the sharp stench of his fear intensifying as he mumbled back a "you're welcome."

The story of Annie's pack was an unusual one; the ancestors of her fellow wolves had been run up the mountain of which they now lived, pursued by a group of furious humans thirsting for their blood. Exhausted and terribly weakened, the pack begged for their lives, persuading their hunters to let them live in exchange for sharing their territory, promising to protect and hunt with the humans, sharing their prey in the hopes that their enemies would accept.

And they did.

So here they were now, a scraggly group of weather-worn men and wolves, barely twenty strong, toughing it out on a mountainside surrounded by snow and thickets of thorn trees.

Maybe not the most pleasant of choices, but at least they wouldn't be able to question Annie and her father. With barely seven pureblooded wolves left, they needed new breeding stock. When a pair of strong weres appeared, one a powerful young loner, another a fierce, pregnant Beta female, the Prime Alpha didn't question it. He invited them to join the pack as full members, promising them protection and acceptance. All seemed well...until Annie's mother went into labor several weeks too early. She died birthing her, the hopes and dreams of the Summit Alliance pack reduced to a raving were driven mad with grief and a tiny little pup who didn't look like he would last her first winter.

But Annie had survived. And now, nearly sixteen years later, she was one of the strongest in the pack...small stature be damned.

She slid into an empty space next to Ymir at the dining tables, clattering her bowl down with a _BANG_ to get the rest of the were's attention. To sit quietly was to show meek subordinance, and if there was something that Annie would _not_ do, it was submit. No way in hell.

Ymir's amber-gold eyes widened in surprise at her presence, then she laughed softly, fangs flashing in the light. Reiner and Bertholdt glanced at her from the other side of Ymir, flashing questioning looks. Annie ignored them and leaned over her stew, shoveling massive spoonfulls of the stuff and swallowing it down with hardly a thought for chewing.

"Well look who's awake," crooned the Alpha next to her. "Hello beauty queen, did you sleep well?" Then, a second later, "Well slow down goddamit, the food ain't going anywhere."

Annie stopped for a second to glare at Ymir, mouth full of stew. Ymir's story was as curious as hers. A few years back, when Annie was twelve, the taller girl had appeared in wolf territory terribly weakened and covered in blood. She had refused to say where she had come from when questioned, or why she was already beginning to show signs of being a powerful alpha. Her only response to Nile and his inner circle's questioning was that her name was Ymir-just Ymir. She'd begged for her life and a place at their fires, and, after much consideration, the Prime Alpha had relented. Ymir had proven herself to be a powerful and capable packmate, despite her weird quirks and strange habit of shielding the right side of her neck.

And her weird obsession with short blondes. Annie included.

She chewed, swallowed, and went back to eating, ignoring the hint of concern in Ymir's voice. Every bite of food seemed to make her even hungrier, and though this was certainly concerning, Annie wasn't one to ignore the demands of her stomach.

"Still as silent as ever, I see." Ymir continued. "Nice to know that at least _someone_ in this group is a regularity." She glared at Reiner and Bertholdt. "Unlike a few weres that I have no wish to mention."

The two males squirmed uncomfortably under her relentless stare until Reiner took the bait, clearing his throat and laughing nervously. "Hey, you can hardly blame us for taking a few steps out of the ordinary!" he proclaimed, crossing his arms and stepping in front of Bertholdt in a desperate attempt to shield the gangly Beta from harm. "Look at Annie. She's sixteen, and she _still_ hasn't presented yet!"

Annie sank her fangs into a particularly tough chunk of meat and growled, glaring up at Reiner with the promise of death in her eyes. Just because he had presented a year earlier as one of the pack's strongest alphas didn't make him any more entitled to make fun of her. Yes, most wolves came into their dynamic at age fifteen, but Annie was half loner, something she reflected and valued greatly. Bother the fact that the number of betas in Summit Alliance were dwindling, damn the fact that the pack's only surviving Omega was becoming too old to breed, she was an independent wolf and was proud of it. Even if a part of her still wished for a place in the crowd.

Bertholdt stepped around his alpha and tugged at Reiner's sleeve, eyes nervously darting to Annie. She met his gaze coolly, but did not bother to try to intimidate him. Berthold was a borderline beta, or one barely toeing the line between being a beta or an omega. Annie suspected that the only thing preventing him from being an omega was his unusually tall stature and muscular physique. Omegas were supposed to be small and fast, wiry but not overly strong. Bertholdt was none of the above.

Was it her, or had it gotten strangely warmer around here...?

"Err, Reiner...that was a little too far." He whispered, sweating nervously. Annie blinked dismissively and scraped around her bowl, Reiner's response falling on deaf ears. Ymir's voice rose up from beside her, sharp and angry, and suddenly the air was full of the scent of enraged Alpha.

Oh.

Annie dropped her spoon as a blast of heat tore through her body. The angry clamoring of the two weres faded into the background, and all that Annie could focus on was that wonderful Alpha smell...so close, so strong...

Her instincts surged again, the surges of heat coming fast and hard now. She was vaguely aware that she was whimpering, grinding her hips against the hard wood of the bench and rubbing her neck against the table.

Reiner and Ymir snapped their heads around, nostrils flaring, eyes glowing with animalistic hunger. Through a daze, Annie watched as Reiner stepped forward, eyes wide, a deep rumble coming from his chest.

"Wow," he whispered, scent flaring to match hers. "She smells amazing..."

Ymir's half -lidded eyes widened in horror, the gold being chased away by amber. "Oh shit. Annie! You're going into heat...!"

She grabbed Annie's wrist and yanked her up, racing away from the clearing, away from Reiner's reaching arms. Annie stumbled after her, legs weakening under her, helpless moans catching in her chest.

Ymir tugged anxiously at her arm, throwing her head back in panic. "Annie! You gotta stay with me, stay 'till we're out of the circle of dens! We gotta get you out of here before they start fighting- Annie, can you hear me?! You're going into heat! Shit, Annie, you're an omega...ANNIE!"

The last thing that Annie felt before she blacked out was the feel of Ymir's grip on her wrist, the last thing she saw the flash of tiny teeth scars on the Alpha's neck, the mark silver and faded with time.

A/N:

Whew. Intro finished. Sorry, it's kinda short... :P

Expect drama later. Drama, and a hell of a lot of explanations, 'cause animal behavior fascinates me and wolf dynamics are ZE BOMB...

'Till next time, peoples.

~Breathing in Poison OUT.


	2. Heat Throes

Disclaimer: WHAT IS IN THE BASEMENT

Annie already hated being an omega.

Every muscle burned like fire, a pool of arousal scorching the pit of her stomach like liquid metal. She was hot, way too hot, sweat pouring down her skin as she writhed on the ground, whimpering and gasping. Grinding didn't help. Her fingers just wouldn't suffice. She needed the heat of another being against her skin, inflaming her, coaxing her own fire into a raging inferno.

Annie let out a long, broken moan, throat vibrating with her call. What seemed like years of screaming out for an alpha rendered her throat raw, the scent glands on either side of her neck throbbing and sore. The air was heavy with her scent; she faded in and out of consciousness as waves of agonizing want resonated from her core.

She vaguely remembered shifting into a wolf a few times during her heat, fuzzily remembered something that Ymir had told her about disguising herself from humans, but the thick fur of her winter coat and wolf instincts proved to be too much for her. She twisted on the cold,unyielding stone of the heat chamber and screamed as another blast of agony tore through her body, the keen ripping her vocal cords to shreds. Blood caught at the back of her throat and she gagged, spitting the red fluid out on the ground and coughing as the burning sensation of her throat regenerating swept up the inside of her neck.

Annie always regenerated startlingly quickly for someone who wasn't an alpha; she'd often hated the way it set her apart, made her different, but now the small part of her mind that wasn't overrun with raging instinct silently thanked the odd quirk as she stopped chocking on her own blood.

She mewled weakly, an Omegan plea for comfort, and curled up, one arm wrapping around her legs, the other reaching up to cup the nape of her neck. Her legs shook with another onslaught of burning warmth, her vision blacking out as her mind tried to shield her sanity from the attack of her own body.

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Annie hazily opened her eyes, feeling the grainy residue of dried tears scratching at her eyelids. She blearily pushed her fringe out of her face and bent over in a hacking cough, mouth parched, throat scratchy with injury and want of water. A speckling of crimson caught her eye and she frowned; apparently her healing aptitude wasn't as capable as she thought.

The exhausted omega weakly lifted her head and gazed around the heat chamber, the stone walls swimming in and out of focus. She eyed the boulder-blocked entryway warily for a long moment before catching sight of a pitcher and basin tucked away in the shadows of the far wall. Annie let out a soft breath of relief and moved to get up, but staggered and crashed to the ground as every nerve in her body screamed out in pain. The she-wolf squeezed her eyes shut and hissed against the ache, tears appearing in her eyes. She waited, heart hammering in her chest, then moved again, painfully crawling across the room to reach the water.

Her thirst finally sated, Annie leaned wearily against the wall, where she finally began to notice the effects the heat, none of them good or beneficial in the least.

She grimaced in disgust; her body was an absolute mess. Dried slick clung stickily to her thighs, practically coating her naval and smelling strongly of mating pheromones . She was horribly skinny, too; countless days of near-constant motion had taken its toll on her, even if she hadn't been mated. Red scratches crusted with congealed blood ran all over her stomach and chest from where she'd scratched herself. Sweat covered her skin in salt, making her uncomfortably warm and itchy. Her hair was oily and hung in her face in dank ropes of dull blonde, nothing like the burnished gold she took pride in. Not to mention the tattered remnants of her clothes hung off her thin frame in a way that could hardly be called attracti-

Annie cut off her train of thought with a snarl of horror. The real Annie Leonhardt never cared about her appearance. She'd never cared about a little blood- heck, Annie used to fall asleep practically covered in the stuff after a long hunt. Were her new Omega instincts influencing the way she thought, changing how she treated and saw the world? Annie sure hoped not. She didn't think she could bear it if the very essence of who she was was washed away by something as simple as an omegan heat.

She picked up the washcloth soaking in the tub and started to bathe vigorously, but no matter how many times she scrubbed at herself until she was raw and tingling, she couldn't seem to wash the scent of omega off her skin.

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A/N: Whew this was a short chapter~I originally intended it to be longer, but the need for dramatic flair caused me to split it into two parts. Not to mention the fact that I'm typing this in the Fanfiction doc manager instead of the communal Word, so as to keep it from prying eyes, and when you accidently delete half the document...whelp. There ain't any redo button.

Heat explanations included in next chapter.

~Breathing in Poison


End file.
